


She Knows Her Onions

by gently_mad



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 15:39:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10642896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gently_mad/pseuds/gently_mad
Summary: Hiccups in trans-dimensional space is why we can't have nice thing. Or omelets...





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a lovely Bioshock Infinite fan illustration by kisu-no-hi. Of course a slice of quiet domestic life would not be complete without completely unnecessary drama...

_Hey Bill, do you remember Sally Brown that we went to school with?_

_Yes Ernie I do!_

_Well! Wasn’t she a Dumb Dora in school especially in arithmetic?_

_Well, she might have been dumb in school, Ernie but you should see her subtract now!_

_Subtract? What do you mean subtract?_

_Well she takes ah ten from one and…twenty from another one. Just a girl what knows her onions…_

Rosalind paused and stared down at what she had just written. A puzzled frown crossed her face. She flipped through a few pages of notes, squinted in the corpse-green light of the tear undulating between the pillars of the Trans-Dimensional Device and turned her head, listening. Jaunty music floated through the room and she could see the tear pulsing erratically in response to it.

 “Ah. No, “ she murmured after a second and quickly scratched out what she had written. “Robert?!”

“Yes?” came the distant reply from the kitchen. The noise of cupboards being opened and shifting pans followed.

“Kindly turn off your phonographs! It is distracting while I am attempting to take notes on portal phenomena!” She heard a disappointed sigh. The music slurred into silence and Rosalind occupied herself with fine-tuning the device for a few minutes before going back to her notes.

“Did you want peppers on your omelet?” Robert called suddenly.

“Good lord, no. Haven’t we discussed this before? Peppers give me dreadful gas. You, of all people ought to know that, “ Rosalind replied sharply. “Do stop interrupting.”

“Oh uhm. Apologies. “

In the chastised clatter of domestic food preparation that followed her answer, Rosalind paused in her notations. A sudden sense of mutual awkwardness cast a discouraging pall over the satisfaction of scientific discovery. She thought a moment.

“ Onions will be fine though, “ she called out. “ Thank you for making breakfast at this hour. It’s been quite a long night.”

“Indeed, “ came his reply. “But a night full of wonderful discoveries.”

After a moment she heard him humming as the wire whisk clinked rhythmically against the rim of the bowl. Content she had resolved the issue, Rosalind went back to her note-taking. Engrossed in her work, she took no further notice of Robert or his blissful kitchen commotion until a particularly loud crash of shattering crockery snapped her out of her reverie. She cast a glance of dry amusement in the direction of the kitchen.

“Robert?” she called. as she lowered her notepad. “Are the omelets giving you trouble?”

A troubling silence followed an inarticulate noise in the kitchen and it took nothing for Rosalind’s amusement to snap into full-blown alarm. She dropped her notes and pencil on the nearest chair and ran for the kitchen, heels clicking against the tile floor.

She immediately saw an unfortunate mess of raw eggs oozing across the kitchen floor amidst the shattered bits of the bowl and a couple of scattered forks but that did not unsettle her as much as the blood dripping steadily on the floor. Robert stood there, his breathing raspy and wet, his face pale. Blood poured from his nose, down his chin and reddened the front of his shirt and vest. He swallowed hard.

“I…” he whispered. “I am not… _Rosalind…what is this…_ ”

“Robert, “ Rosalind said, her voice remarkably calm and quiet. “It is just another nosebleed. Here…” She pulled open the nearest drawer, fished out a kitchen towel, dampened it under the sink pump and moved towards him. “ We’ll find a chair and you can sit down…Robert?”

Robert stared at her, his eyes glassy. He took a step backwards. He raised his hand and ran his fingers through his hair before he grabbed a handful of it and tugged gently. A look of confusion and fear contorted his face. His gaze shifted around, looking at the kitchen, the floor, the ceiling before turning back to her.

“ I…ah…h-how did I get here…where…” he mumbled. He staggered back and leaned heavily against the counter, his eyes half-closed.“ Madame…I’m sorry…you are?”

_Shock. That is all it is. He has a bad nosebleed, he’s had them before and he’s suffering from shock. He needs to sit down, perhaps lie down in the bedroom with a cold compress to his head, has he suffered a concussion recently, maybe that last explosion, he will need tea, I will need tea it is all right it is all right…_ Rosalind’s logic did its best to tamp down the icy flood of anxiety rampaging through her blood but she could see something much more wrong going on in front of her, something not yet entirely explainable. She reached out towards him, feeling time slow and bend, feeling the entirety of solid existence fuzz and soften around them both.

“Dead…” he muttered. “Dead.”

His eyes flew open and animalistic terror jerked him away from her. His elbow jogged the Victrola sitting on the counter, the needle jumped and skidded across the disc and cheerful music suddenly blared through the silent kitchen: _you know on Broadway the other day I met someone you know…_

Reality exhaled. Rosalind caught his face gently between her hands, looked him steadily in the eyes.

“Robert, “ she said.

He blinked like a sailor catching a faceful of cold salt water and stared down at her, blood trickling down his face and neck. Gradually she felt existence coming back into focus, felt his skin warming and becoming solid against her fingers. The nosebleed slowed and stopped.

“Robert, “ she repeated gently.

“What…what did I forget to do…“ he muttered.

A prim smile briefly touched her mouth. She gave his face a little pat and nodded towards the kitchen towel lying on the counter.“You are an idiot. Do take that and clean up your face.”

She only allowed herself to relax when he did, when she could see recognition coming back into his expression and the disorientation slipping away. He reached up and pressed his hand against hers for a moment before he shifted himself and their hands dropped away.

“Ugh, “ he commented. gingerly wiping off his face and giving his ruined vest and shirt a distasteful look. “What was all that? I saw blood on the back of my hand and I rather went out of my head for a second.”

“Do you remember anything?” Rosalind asked as she took the towel from him, rinsed it out and knelt down to wipe the blood off the floor.

Robert frowned and closed his eyes.

“There was…” He waved his hand a bit, trying to pluck words out of the air, thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No. Nothing like specific thoughts anyways. A sort of vague sensation of falling backwards. Coldness. Ugh. A quite wretched feeling of my body decaying? That was unpleasant.”

“I can only imagine, “ Rosalind replied. She stood back up, dropped the towel in the nearby hamper and washed off her hands in the sink. “We will need to document it.”

“Absolutely. As soon as I clean up and attempt the omelets again, “ Robert replied. “How badly did I act?”

“You had no idea who I was and I was fairly certain you had started phasing out of reality. How queer, “ Rosalind mused.

“Very queer. Hm. Where have you hidden the dustpan and broom? “ He began wandering around the kitchen.

“It’s in the pantry closet where it always is, Robert. “ Rosalind glanced over at the Victrola still playing. A theory had begun gestating in the back of her brain and when Robert passed by the Victrola and made as if to turn it off, Rosalind pressed her lips together and made a noise of discouragement.

“You can leave it, “ she said. Robert raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I thought it was distracting.”

“It is. Furthermore you have appalling taste in music, “ Rosalind answered. Robert stopped at the pantry closet and exchanged a meaningful glance with her . Then they both raised their hands and tapped the side of their temples.

“Exactly, “ Rosalind said. “Nothing concrete yet. Just a flash of intuition.”

“I hope you shan’t be greedy and share with the rest of the class?”

“You needn’t pretend that you did not suspect some sort of connection, given the number of phonographic discs you’ve been accumulating over the last month alone.”

“Ah, and here I thought I was using respondent conditioning to get you to appreciate my terrible music” He smiled slightly and began sweeping up the mess on the floor. “ Truth be told, I just found the music calming in the midst of adjusting to well…all of this. You’re proposing there’s something more going on? ”

“Possibly at a subatomic level but we’ll have to set up some te…” Something began buzzing in the other room and interrupted her in mid-sentence. She gave an exasperated sigh.“Never mind. We can discuss this later. You’re certain you are feeling up to continuing cooking?”

Robert dumped the mess in the waste bin.

“Someone really should tend to the device, dear, “ he answered and gave her a nod. Rosalind needed no further persuasion and hurried off.

***

Later that evening, Rosalind awoke to the sounds of the completed phonograph hissing to itself as it spun on the Victrola and Robert snoring loudly next to her, an unfortunate side effect of his nosebleeds. He lay sprawled across his side of the bed,  one leg dangling over the side and a copy of Planck’s _Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung im Normalspektrum_ covering his face. A half-empty cup of cold tea sat on his nightstand. His fork and his little china plate, scattered with a few uneaten bell pepper bits, rested on his stomach.

Rosalind gently took the plate and fork and set it aside. She lifted the book off of Robert’s face and studied him a moment. He looked as he usually did when asleep: brow slightly furrowed as though deep in thought but otherwise peaceful. He had dark circles under his eyes and a night’s worth of reddish stubble trying to creep across his normally smooth jawline. She closed the book and set it on her nightstand.

She turned off the Victrola and picked up the disc on it and read the label. In the corner of their room, Robert had meticulously stacked more phonograph discs. Half of them, she suspected, had been brought through tears; she didn’t claim to know anything about popular music nowadays but some of them she had heard him playing sounded downright bizarre. She carefully placed the disc back on the machine, wound it up and after a moment’s thought, lifted the needle and set it gingerly down on the revolving black edge:

_She’s smart, I’m telling you! Well I’ll give her credit,too…She’s a girl who knows her onions!_

Listening to it for a little while, Rosalind had to admit it, she found that ridiculous song _infuriatingly_ catchy…


End file.
